Notebook

On Saturday afternoons, Mr Collymore has become involved in a practice known as football

Many of us would have been grateful for my colleague Sam Leith's explaining here yesterday what "dogging" was. The word had been in the papers all week as the sport at which Stan Collymore excels.

Mr Leith quoted Mr Collymore as saying that there were "no hard and fast rules". Matches sometimes begin with the players swapping mobile telephone numbers. This information was especially useful to those of us who do not follow dogging. There are more of us than the tabloids think. We immediately switch off when Dog of the Day comes on the television. We might, every four years, watch the World Dog Final, but that is about it.

We find loutish, working-class dogging fans bad enough. Even more depressingly, the sport has become popular among the middle classes, including intellectuals. "I never miss a home dog at Millwall," one often hears a novelist tell a Tate Modern administrator.

None the less, there is something disturbing about Mr Collymore's activities. Dogging is what Mr Collymore is now associated with in the public mind. He is one of England's top dogs. Yet it seems that, on Saturday afternoons, he has become involved in a practice known as "football".

He explained: "It started as a way of relieving the tension of having to dog all week. I heard about these people who spend Saturday afternoons kicking one another, and rolling on the ground pretending to be hurt. I thought I'd try it. Then I found I was doing it every Saturday afternoon.

"There's no hard and fast rules. Some players go off to molest women in bars and clubs, so it's quite varied. Sometimes we get started by just swapping punches in the face. I became fascinated."

This has implications for society. Famous doggers are role models. To his credit, Mr Collymore is repentant. As well as other players, he is trying to kick the habit.

There are suggestions that the Prime Minister should make public the advice about the Iraq war that he gave to himself. Lawyers and constitutional experts are divided. The arguments are finely balanced. Some say that the advice that Mr Blair gives himself must remain private.

Others say that there are precedents for disclosure of the advice Mr Blair receives. For example, the advice to him from the Chancellor of the Exchequer has often been made public: resign. Carole Caplin advised him to avoid bad karma. It was not her fault that he ignored her, saying that he never ate Indian food anyway. We have not heard the last of all this.

Some Londoners, and visitors to London, will start over the next few weeks, or have already started, a great journey. Other, that is, from somehow getting to work. At the grandly refurbished Coliseum, English National Opera is staging a new production of Das Rheingold, or since it is in English translation, The Rhine Gold - the first part of Wagner's Ring cycle over four evenings and many hours.

Many travellers will give up, deciding that there is a lot less here than the length promises. But many will become Wagnerians, many of whom will in due course, like most Wagnerians, become Wagnerians with reservations.

As one of the latter, who started the journey as an adolescent, I urge others to set out. But do not do so without maps. The easiest introductions: William O Cord (Ohio University Press, but available here) and M Owen Lee (Summit Books).

A recording? Solti's: the most exciting. If you eventually find it superficial and prefer Krauss, Furtwängler and Knappertsbusch, you will have become a Wagnerian.